Week 2 film 3.
An extra film viewing this week with my scope low fade print of the musical western, Paint your wagon from 1969.
How do you go from enjoying films like Silence of the lambs, Die Hard and T2 to this? Simple, it is a funny film with two huge stars, Lee Marvin, (always brilliant) and Clint Eastwood.
The print is in very good condition and on the scope screen looks superb, unfortunately, the colours don’t show up so well with these screen shots but you get a good idea.
This print, as marked on its original leader, is a “short version” and I believe this to be an alternative, version released after the initial main release had done the rounds, in my opinion I think this 3 x 1600 version is better, it certainly removes a chunk of padding, especially in the first reel as two of the three songs which have been edited out would have been within reel one. The way in which they have been taken out is quite well done, unless you know where these song numbers are, you will not know, dissolves and different music in these parts have been used and the transitions are perfect.
This is what I found about the shorter version,
“On its release to what were then called "neighbourhood theatres" (i.e. theatres which showed films that had ended their first runs downtown), the film's running time was shortened by having three songs eliminated, "I Still See Elisa", "The First Thing You Know", and "Gold Fever". This left both Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood with only one solo song each. The film was restored to its original length for its first television showing, and has remained that way ever since”. I’ll stick with this shorter version.
I’ve not heard of this shorter before I bought it so I have no idea if this is a common version or a rare version, either way a very enjoyable film with Lee Marvin providing some good laughs.
Eivind, As this is a mix of 8 and 16mm film over the next 12 months, are you able to move this to "Film talk in general" please?